to be
fought out in Spain. Julius Caesar's conspiracy against the Roman
Republic, and his desperate fight with Pompey for the dictatorship,
long drenched Spanish soil with blood, and had its final culmination
(after Pompey's tragic death in Egypt) in Caesar's victory over
Pompey's sons at Munda, in Spain, 45 B.C.

With this event, the military triumphs and the intrigues of Caesar
had accomplished his purpose. He was declared _Imperator_, perpetual
Dictator of Rome, and religious sacrifices were decreed to him as if
he were a god. Unconscious of the chasm which was yawning at his feet
he haughtily accepted the honors and adulation of men who were at that
very moment conspiring for his death. On the fatal "Ides of March"
(44 B.C.) he was stricken in the Senate Chamber by the hands of his
friends, and the great Caesar lay dead at the feet of Pompey's statue.

The world had reached a supreme crisis in its existence. Two
events--the most momentous it has ever known--were at hand: the birth
of a Roman Empire, which was to perish in a few centuries, after a
life of amazing splendor; and the birth of a spiritual kingdom, which
would never die!

Caesar's nephew, Octavius Augustus, by gradual approaches reached
the goal toward which no doubt his greater uncle was moving. After
defeating Brutus and Cassius at Philippi (42 B.C.) and then after
destroying his only competitor, Antony, at Actium (31 B.C.) he assumed
the imperial purple under the name of Augustus. The title sounded
harmless, but its wearer had founded the "Roman Empire."

At last there was peace. Spain was pacified, and only here and there
did she struggle in the grasp of the Romans. Augustus, to make sure of
the permanence of this pacification, himself went to the Peninsula.
He built cities in the plains, where he compelled the stubborn
mountaineers to reside, and established military colonies in the
places they had occupied.

Saragossa was one of these cities in the plains, and its name was
"Caesar Augusta," and many others have wandered quite as far from their
original names, which may, however, still be traced.

It is said that "the annals of the happy are brief." Let us hope
that poor Spain, so long harried by fate, was happy in the next four
hundred years, for her story can be briefly told. She seemed to have
settled into a state of eternal peace. It was a period not of external
events, but of a process--an internal process of assimilation. Spain,
in eve